Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

The Minister may believe that but I cannot understand why. Did he take advice on the likely impact of a tax set at such a low level? Was any research done on it at all? The other side of this concerns what is happening to property prices. We are aware that in the year to last August, property prices increased by 12.2%. In the context of somebody being able to leave a property vacant for 12 months, with it increasing in value by 12%, how on earth is a tax of 0.3% going to influence what that person will do? There is no incentive. It is a perverse incentive, actually.

There is no incentive whatsoever to sell or to let that property. Could the Minister give us some idea of the supporting evidence on which he worked? This just does not make sense on any level whatsoever. We know that there are 90,000 houses available.

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